


Loving you is a losing game

by jacemorgensterns



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 01:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19032394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacemorgensterns/pseuds/jacemorgensterns
Summary: When Clary loses her memory of the Shadow World, Jace doesn't know what to do with himself. After a much-needed intervention, he decides to think outside of the box. Clary had to adjust to the Shadow World, so Jace decides he should at least give adjusting to the mundane world a shot. (Jace POV).





	Loving you is a losing game

**Author's Note:**

> The Shadowhunters' series ending for Jace and Clary didn't feel quite fitting to me, so I decided to attempt another approach and finally put my Jace-referencing Archive of Our Own username to some good use.

Jace woke up from the sound of someone opening the door of his temporary bedroom. A headache was the second thing that entered his senses, so he reached out for his stele on his nightstand with his eyes closed, knocking off an empty cup in the process. The cup fell to the ground. Footsteps walked towards him and hands just slightly smaller than his handed him the stele before this person sat down on the mattress beside him. He opened his eyes before he drew an iratze and felt the headache fade.

“You can’t keep doing this, Jace,” Maryse said. She pushed a lock of blond hair away from his face and touched his cheek briefly before drawing back. “This isn’t like you.”

Now that was nonsense. He rather thought that his self-destructive nature was a known fact, since it returned time and time again when he was miserable. He was sure Magnus and Alec could vouch for that, since the first time he remembered feeling this miserable since meeting Clary was when it was still believed it was demon blood and he decided he may as well live by it. Bullied away from the Institute, he had taken a room at Magnus’ apartment. It was safe to say that his parabatai and his boyfriend felt he was using Magnus’ hospitality by bringing home girls after going drinking with them. In his defence, Aldertree would have kicked him out of the Institute if he brought a Seelie to his bedroom. That man truly loathed Downworlders. Later on he figured out that it was much smarter to go home with the Downworlders instead of taking them to his bed. He had proven as much with Maia.

“That’s just incorrect,” he replied as he pushed himself up so he was sitting up straight. He took the cup of water that Maryse handed him and took a few slow sips. “What are you doing here? What time is it?” She should be downstairs, at her shop.

“I’m on my break,” Maryse replied. “But you shouldn’t divert from the subject. It’s been two weeks and you can’t keep doing this.”

He remembered when she last told him that. They thought that Clary had just died and he didn’t know what to do with himself. Maryse told him that she would have wanted him to keep on living now that they defeated Jonathan. So he kept on hunting demons. That he signed up for missions more dangerous than usually, was always the first one out of the Institute and the last one back was apparently beside the point right now. 

But this time she couldn’t say that. Clary wasn’t dead. He didn’t need to grieve. There was nothing that Clary would have wanted, because Clary didn’t know any of it.

“I’m not doing anything,” Jace replied as he got out of bed and moved to pull a T-shirt over his head. “I don’t want to be at the Institute, so I’m here. And I don’t want people telling me what to do, so I go out. It’s perfectly healthy not to want annoying happy couples around you when your relationship just ended.”

“But that’s the problem,” Maryse said as she got up from the bed and turned to look at him. “You’re keeping your distance from the people you love and who love you, because you don’t want to ruin their happiness. But you’re not.  You’re a part of our family and we want to help you. You can’t hide out in the mundane world.”

“I beg to differ,” Jace said. “So far it has been going wonderfully.”

The look that followed was one that captured the years of history between them. When he first came to the Institute after he thought that his father Michael died and Maryse was the only one he trusted. Later, when he got older, he would do just about anything to get approval and always strived to be the best due to that. Then, when they believed he was Valentine’s son with demon blood, he knew that he failed the Lightwoods and Maryse seemed to be acting like it. When it turned out he was actually a Herondale and Maryse got deruned, things finally settled between them. Jace was still struggling with the concept of a parent being there for him no matter how much he screwed up, but he liked to think he was getting there.  

“Jace,” Maryse said strictly. “You’re not going to be able to keep this up forever. You have to go back to the Institute to get your life back. Or for today, at least eat brunch and help me out in the store. Small steps. Okay?”

“Okay,” he conceded. 

\--

After a shower and brunch, Jace walked into his mother’s antique and book store. To his surprise, he saw Alec there, as though waiting for him.

“Simon says you keep checking up on Clary,” his parabatai said by way of greeting. “You have to stop torturing yourself like that. It’s not going to change anything.”  
  
Jace shot a look aside at their mother, who was talking to a customer. She didn’t need to have confirmation that was what he was doing before going drinking. “Hello to you too,” he greeted his parabatai dryly. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Magnus?”

“Magnus is with Catarina,” Alec replied. “Something about Lorenzo and warlock business. I’m still sort of surprised Magnus invited him to the wedding. Apparently he spoke to Underhill as well. I think -” And that was when Alec caught Jace’s small smirk that betrayed he had taken the bait that was supposed to deflect from the subject at hand. “Jace. I get it. When Magnus was in Edom, all I wanted was to go there myself to get him back. But there’s nothing that you can do for her.  She’s not one of us anymore.”

Jace looked at Alec thoughtfully. When Magnus had been in Edom, Alec had been willing to do literally anything to get to be with him. He even asked Simon to turn him into a vampire just so he could enter Edom. Luckily he got that out of his head because Clary created the Alliance rune. Magnus had been somewhere that Alec could not reach him because he was in another dimension. Clary, on the other hand, was still in New York City, but just as a mundane. If Alec could go to Edom for Magnus, than Jace surely could try to become a mundane for Clary. Memory or not, they had met and fallen in love once before and that way Jace could still be around her.

“But I could become one of her species,” he said. “I could be a mundane.” His mind was already racing miles ahead of how he could pull it off. He could just live with Maryse, if she didn’t grow sick of him, and he could have Simon teach him about mundane stuff. He could even enrol at some music college to make his facade believable. The glamour rune could hide his runes and no one would be the wiser.

“Jace, you’re not a mundane,” Alec said with a matter-of-fact undertone. “You could never pull that off. You like being a Shadowhunter way too much.” He hated it when Alec was right. Hunting demons what was he was born and raised to do. At some days it was the only days that brought him peace.

Jace glared at him. “You were ready to move into Magnus’ palace in Edom, so you don’t get to criticize me for this. And besides, who says I can’t be both? I can hunt demons when the mundanes go to school and then be around in the evening.”

He was pretty sure it was more crazy to offer to become a Downworlder so you could find your fiancé in Edom and help him fight evil in hell, but it seemed that Alec didn’t agree with him. “She doesn’t remember you,” Alec reminded him. “She’s not gone, but her memories are. Being around her isn’t going to bring them back, it’s just going to be more painful for you. She’s living her own life and so should you.”

“I don’t want to,” Jace replied. The customer and Maryse were looking at them, so Jace promptly left to the hallway and closed the door behind Alec. “Tell me that you wouldn’t have wanted to be with Magnus even if he lost his memories of you, just so maybe he would fall in love with you again. We only love once and I refuse to lose Clary.” He had lost her too many times to be able to let go now. Not after Valentine took him away, Lilith manipulated him and Jonathan took Clary.

“So you want to be around, pretending to be mundane and making friends with her with the slightest hope that she’ll fall in love with you, so you can be a mundane with her?” Alec asked incredulously. “Even if that works -”

“I can be very charming,” Jace said with a grin.

Alec ignored that interruption. “Even if that works, you would either have to tell her about the Shadow World or pretend like you were a mundane. Neither are good scenarios. What if you lie and she finds out? Or what if you tell her and she doesn’t believe you because she can’t see it?”

Historically, Jace liked to wing it. Alec would argue that it was a bad trait because it got him in trouble more times than he could count, but the ability to wing it also got him out of trouble more times that he could count. It was a blessing as much as it was a curse.

“Alec, you’re overthinking it,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

The door swung open and Maryse studied both of them with a slight frown in her eyebrows. Jace guessed that she had helped the customer and then came to check up on them. “What’s going to be fine?” she asked, clearly having overheard Jace’s last sentence.

Of course, Alec threw him under the bus immediately. “Jace wants to become a mundane to get back with Clary.” That was not at all what he was planning to do.

He side-eyed his parabatai. “No, I was thinking of approaching her and pretending like I was a mundane. I can’t become a mundane. I don’t understand those people. But I don’t have to be in the mundane world all the time to make it believable.” Whatever he was going to do at the Institute now that the streets were finally starting to get quieter because they weren’t filled with Circle members of Valentine’s offspring could be done during the day, Jace thought. He could make up a cover story to tell whatever mundane he encountered easily. Like he said: he could be very charming when he wanted to be.

“Don’t you think that your heart is going to get broken again?” Maryse asked, concern obvious. She regarded him closely and sighed. “Jace. I would hate to see you get hurt again.”

It seemed to him that both Alec and Maryse didn’t get it. They probably wouldn’t. Alec thought he lost Magnus for a while and would have gone to great lengths to get him back, but Magnus remembered. And while he didn’t dispute Maryse’s experiences, he doubted that she had ever been in a situation like this. There were no guarantees of anything, just that he may get to spend time with Clary as a mundane if he approached the situation as one.

“I’m already hurt,” he said. “This can’t get worse, just better. And if it fails at least I know I tried. Not trying would be worse. I have to do this.”


End file.
